Saturday, April 28, 2007

Is the drought over?

There has been good rain [ 25 - 50mm, sometimes a bit more] across much of southern Australia from Western Australia through South Australia and now [ 28 April] extending into Victoria, NSW and S Queensland and Tasmania.

There even appears to be more frontal systems coming across, with additional rain predicted for next week too.

While most farmers are being cautious in thinking or saying too much, this weekend will see a lot of tractors racing across paddocks with urgent planting of forage and grain crops, to follow some planted dry last week. There is guarded optimism in these temperate farming areas.

BUT..........river flows are abysmally low to nil, and it will take a huge amount of rain to get them going again.

It is also notable that the SOI has changed dramatically and quickly from weakening from a strong negative to be close to neutral or slightly negative over the past several months [ie close to neutral, or tending towards normal ] to be -11, whiich is strongly el Nino. This type of figure, if persistent, is usually interpreted as indicating el Nino conditions - and dry for temperate Australia. So one needs to watch through a few different indicators. Most climate forecasters tend to favour more normal to slightly wetter conditions over the next 3-6 months [ see post of March 21], and there is a good discussion on climate pages of the Met Bureau web site. They favour slightly better than median rainfall in temperate areas of Australia over the next few months [ www.bom.gov.au].

Australia is a land of contrasts, with drought often followed by flood. Summed up so eloquently in the poem of John O'Brien "Said Hanrahan"